DescriptionThe database consists includes information about all US patents (including utility, design, reissue, plant patents and SIR documents) from the first patent issued in 1790 to the most recent issue week. Patents from January 1976 to the present offer the full searchable text, including all bibliographic data, such as the inventor's name, the patent's title, and the assignee's name; the abstract; the full description of the invention; and the claims. The display of each patent's full-text includes a hyperlink to obtain full-page images of each page of the patent. Information from Certificates of Correction and Reexaminations is not included in the full-text database per se, but can be found as pages attached to the full-page images of the original patent. Patents from 1790 to December 1975 offer only the patent number and the current US patent classification in the text display, and can be searched only by those fields. However, this limited text display also includes a hyperlink to obtain full-page images of each page of the patent. (Updated weekly)